Chapter Four—For the Beauty of the Earth
In 2002, Julie and I renewed our wedding vows. Our original wedding day was a wet, overcast event in which two very young and “in love” people committed themselves to something bigger than they either imagined. I had just graduated from college (barely) the week before and Julie really didn’t get to plan her wedding the way she would have wanted. It was beautiful and tasteful yet it was not what she had envisioned for that special day.
So on a beautiful spring morning in an outside garden service, Julie and I recommitted ourselves to the vows we had made ten years earlier. It was amazing. Julie was stunning in a simple white gown and hair up in flowers with curls hanging down framing her deep blue eyes. Samuel walked her down from the back door of the church to the garden of tall trees that shaded the area from the morning sun. Noah carried the second ring we found for the occasion and Emma tried her best to drop flower pedals for Julie to walk on. I was a little thinner in the waste (and the hair) than I was ten years earlier. Dear friends from seminary (whom we had spent the past five and a half years living life together—see the previous chapter) were there to celebrate with us and one of my favorite professors performed the ceremony.
It was beautiful but now, six years later, the beauty of that moment is gone. We have lots of photos and videos taken by neighbors. Yet in all of the photos and all of the video, nothing can capture the beauty of that day and that moment. Even in that moment though, we were left wanting more beauty.
Wright talks about the “transience of beauty” (pg. 40). A photograph, a recording, a book, a painting, a play, a film—all of these things are flashes of beauty that fade away. Wright says that beauty always leaves us wanting more. Beauty is “the sense of longing, the kind of pleasure which is exquisite and yet leaves us unsatisfied….The world is full of beauty, but the beauty [itself] is incomplete” (pg. 40).
Wright suggests that we know, deep inside, that this beauty is fleeting and transient. But at the same time, we deeply long for a beauty that is permanent and lasting. Paul says that permanence is coming and today we see things through a dimly lit mirror but someday, “we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely” (1st Cor. 13:12). Wright says that God promises to complete what God began “The beauty of this world will be enfolded in the beauty of God—and not just the beauty of God himself, but the beauty which, because God is the creator par excellence, he will create when the present world is rescued, healed, restored and completed.”
Questions—
1. What did you experience this week (see, touch, smell, hear) that was beautiful? How does that compare with the most beautiful thing you have experienced?
2. Have you ever longed for beauty? What is it like? What is it like to experience beauty knowing that it won’t always be the way you experienced it for the moment you were there?
3. How has that beautiful thing, not lost its luster but left you longing for more beauty?
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Friday, June 27, 2008
Week Three Part One - Chapter 3
Chapter Three—Made For Each Other
“It seems that we humans were designed to find our purpose and meaning not simply in ourselves and our own inner lives, but in one another and in the shared meanings and purposes of a family, a street, a workplace, a community, a town. A nation.” (pg. 31).
We were made for relationships. Life together. Community. The person who avoids relationships—the loner, the hermit, the recluse—are seen as unusual because they separate themselves from that which we all know deep in our being that we need—relationships.
Thus from the most intimate relationship (marriage) to those on the largest scale (national institutions) we find the same thing: we all know we are made to live together, but we all find that doing so is more difficult than we had imagined.” (pgs. 33).
Yet while we know the importance of relationships and regardless of whether we are “extroverts” or “introverts” we all long to be known by someone, we also know that relationships are incredibly difficult. Look at any the relationships you have with your family, your friends, your neighbors and your colleagues. Failed marriages. Dysfunctional families. Betrayed friendships. Politics at work. Is any of your relationships easy? How could something so desired, so longed for and so important to understanding who we are be at the same time so difficult, so damaging, so painful and mind-numbingly hard?
“Relationship was part of the way in which we were meant to be fully human, not for our own sake, but as part of a much larger scheme of things. And our failures in human relationship are thereby woven into our failures in the other large projects of which we know in our bones that we are part: our failure to put the world to rights in systems of justice, and our failure to maintain and develop that spirituality which, at its heart, involves a relationship of trust and love with the Creator” (pg. 37).
Wright ends his chapter with hope—It is only Christianity that shows us a God that loves healthy relationships. God is in relationship with Himself—God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. God desires relationship with God’s Creation and that model of health is what God desires for us both with God, with ourselves and with one another. “The voice is reminding us of who we really are. It may even be offering us some kind of rescue from our predicament…” (pg. 38).
Questions to think about—
1. How have the following relationships formed who you are today, both good and bad—
a. Your parents or guardians from when you were a child—
b. Your siblings—
c. Your Spouse or significant other—
d. Your Friends—
2. What is the most important relationship in your life today? What about that relationship makes it so important? How difficult is it to maintain that relationship?
“It seems that we humans were designed to find our purpose and meaning not simply in ourselves and our own inner lives, but in one another and in the shared meanings and purposes of a family, a street, a workplace, a community, a town. A nation.” (pg. 31).
We were made for relationships. Life together. Community. The person who avoids relationships—the loner, the hermit, the recluse—are seen as unusual because they separate themselves from that which we all know deep in our being that we need—relationships.
Thus from the most intimate relationship (marriage) to those on the largest scale (national institutions) we find the same thing: we all know we are made to live together, but we all find that doing so is more difficult than we had imagined.” (pgs. 33).
Yet while we know the importance of relationships and regardless of whether we are “extroverts” or “introverts” we all long to be known by someone, we also know that relationships are incredibly difficult. Look at any the relationships you have with your family, your friends, your neighbors and your colleagues. Failed marriages. Dysfunctional families. Betrayed friendships. Politics at work. Is any of your relationships easy? How could something so desired, so longed for and so important to understanding who we are be at the same time so difficult, so damaging, so painful and mind-numbingly hard?
“Relationship was part of the way in which we were meant to be fully human, not for our own sake, but as part of a much larger scheme of things. And our failures in human relationship are thereby woven into our failures in the other large projects of which we know in our bones that we are part: our failure to put the world to rights in systems of justice, and our failure to maintain and develop that spirituality which, at its heart, involves a relationship of trust and love with the Creator” (pg. 37).
Wright ends his chapter with hope—It is only Christianity that shows us a God that loves healthy relationships. God is in relationship with Himself—God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. God desires relationship with God’s Creation and that model of health is what God desires for us both with God, with ourselves and with one another. “The voice is reminding us of who we really are. It may even be offering us some kind of rescue from our predicament…” (pg. 38).
Questions to think about—
1. How have the following relationships formed who you are today, both good and bad—
a. Your parents or guardians from when you were a child—
b. Your siblings—
c. Your Spouse or significant other—
d. Your Friends—
2. What is the most important relationship in your life today? What about that relationship makes it so important? How difficult is it to maintain that relationship?
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Simply Christian Background
Todd Richards provided us with a great outline/summary of how NT Wright sets up his book. Here is a good overview:
N.T. “Tom” Wright is the Anglican Bishop of Durham. He was educated at Oxford and is considered as one of the leading New Testament scholars in the world today. He is as much a historian as a theologian in that Wright believes that to understand Christianity, one has to understand the Old Testament, first century Judaism and the early church.
Simply Christian is broken up into three sections. In section one, Wright looks at four “Echoes of a voice” that each hear—
• The Longing for Justice (Chapter One)
• The Quest for Spirituality (Chapter Two)
• The Hunger for Relationship (Chapter Three)
• The Delight in Beauty (Chapter Four)
These four Echoes are “universal intuitions” that each of us hear. They have been distorted though because the Voice is heard through our own line of personal defenses that we have to protect us from the outside world. As a result, justice, spirituality, relationships and beauty have been distorted and we fill our longing with versions of the four echoes that are less than they ought to be.
Section two talks about how these four themes are ultimately answered and redeemed through Jesus Christ and this thing called Christianity. Finally, section three outlines how we live into these four themes in the day-to-day of walking with Jesus.
N.T. “Tom” Wright is the Anglican Bishop of Durham. He was educated at Oxford and is considered as one of the leading New Testament scholars in the world today. He is as much a historian as a theologian in that Wright believes that to understand Christianity, one has to understand the Old Testament, first century Judaism and the early church.
Simply Christian is broken up into three sections. In section one, Wright looks at four “Echoes of a voice” that each hear—
• The Longing for Justice (Chapter One)
• The Quest for Spirituality (Chapter Two)
• The Hunger for Relationship (Chapter Three)
• The Delight in Beauty (Chapter Four)
These four Echoes are “universal intuitions” that each of us hear. They have been distorted though because the Voice is heard through our own line of personal defenses that we have to protect us from the outside world. As a result, justice, spirituality, relationships and beauty have been distorted and we fill our longing with versions of the four echoes that are less than they ought to be.
Section two talks about how these four themes are ultimately answered and redeemed through Jesus Christ and this thing called Christianity. Finally, section three outlines how we live into these four themes in the day-to-day of walking with Jesus.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Week Two – Chapters 1 & 2
Continuing in our study of N.T. Wright’s great work, I want to lift up some key quotes, some pertinent scriptures and some reflective questions. Enjoy and continue to share your processing with us by making comments below
Chapter One
QUOTE
“The art of being gentle – of kindness and forgiveness, sensitivity and thoughtfulness and generosity and humility and good old-fashioned love – have gone out of fashion. Ironically, everyone is demanding their “rights,” and this demand is so shrill that it destroys one of the most basic “rights,” if we can put it like that: the “right,” or at least the longing and hope, to have a peaceful, stable, secure, and caring place to live, to be, to learn, and to flourish. Once again people ask the question: Why is it like this? Does it have to be like this? Can things be put to rights and if so how?...we can say that the reason we have these dreams, the reason we have a sense of a memory of the echo of a voice, is that there is someone speaking to us, whispering in our inner ear – someone who cares very much about this present world and our present selves.” (page 8, 9)
SCRIPTURE – Matthew 5 NLT
“God blesses those who are poor and realize their need for him for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs. 4 God blesses those who mourn, for they will be comforted. 5 God blesses those who are humble, for they will inherit the whole earth. 6 God blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice for they will be satisfied. 7 God blesses those who are merciful, for they will be shown mercy.”
REFLECTION
• Where does our sense of justice come from and how do my rights fit into God’s whispers for this reality?
• Where does the life of Jesus fit in with our sense of and the fulfillment of justice?
Chapter Two
QUOTE
“’The hidden spring’ of spirituality is the second feature of human life which, I suggest, functions as the echo of a voice; as a signpost pointing away from the bleak landscape of modern secularism and toward the possibility that we humans are made for more than this.” (page 20)
SCRIPTURE – Matthew 10 NLT
28 Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.”
REFLECTION
• How does your spirituality tell you that you were made for more?
• Jesus promises rest for our souls. If you experience that on a normal basis, what is it that gets you there?
• How does or should Christian spirituality affect making things right in the world?
BLESSING
My prayer for all of us today is that we would allow the voice of the One who called us and cares deeply about things being made right to cloud out the individualistic “rights” that are not from God and in fact are keeping us from living God’s Kingdom here as it is in heaven!
Chapter One
QUOTE
“The art of being gentle – of kindness and forgiveness, sensitivity and thoughtfulness and generosity and humility and good old-fashioned love – have gone out of fashion. Ironically, everyone is demanding their “rights,” and this demand is so shrill that it destroys one of the most basic “rights,” if we can put it like that: the “right,” or at least the longing and hope, to have a peaceful, stable, secure, and caring place to live, to be, to learn, and to flourish. Once again people ask the question: Why is it like this? Does it have to be like this? Can things be put to rights and if so how?...we can say that the reason we have these dreams, the reason we have a sense of a memory of the echo of a voice, is that there is someone speaking to us, whispering in our inner ear – someone who cares very much about this present world and our present selves.” (page 8, 9)
SCRIPTURE – Matthew 5 NLT
“God blesses those who are poor and realize their need for him for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs. 4 God blesses those who mourn, for they will be comforted. 5 God blesses those who are humble, for they will inherit the whole earth. 6 God blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice for they will be satisfied. 7 God blesses those who are merciful, for they will be shown mercy.”
REFLECTION
• Where does our sense of justice come from and how do my rights fit into God’s whispers for this reality?
• Where does the life of Jesus fit in with our sense of and the fulfillment of justice?
Chapter Two
QUOTE
“’The hidden spring’ of spirituality is the second feature of human life which, I suggest, functions as the echo of a voice; as a signpost pointing away from the bleak landscape of modern secularism and toward the possibility that we humans are made for more than this.” (page 20)
SCRIPTURE – Matthew 10 NLT
28 Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.”
REFLECTION
• How does your spirituality tell you that you were made for more?
• Jesus promises rest for our souls. If you experience that on a normal basis, what is it that gets you there?
• How does or should Christian spirituality affect making things right in the world?
BLESSING
My prayer for all of us today is that we would allow the voice of the One who called us and cares deeply about things being made right to cloud out the individualistic “rights” that are not from God and in fact are keeping us from living God’s Kingdom here as it is in heaven!
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Simply Christian Week One - Introduction
I was sitting on the back porch of a rented vacation home during the week of our United Methodist Annual Conference this week when I picked up N.T. Wright’s book, Simply Christian. I was struck by the irony of the moment. Here is a book that tries to make sense of Christianity while about 150 feet from me, men and women from western Ohio were praying, voting, worshipping and electing in “sessions of the church.” I was trying to figure out what the neighbor who didn’t rent his house out for the week thinks about this Annual Conference and even deeper about this thing called “Christianity.”
In Wright’s introduction he states that his aim of the text is “to describe what Christianity is all about.” A simple task. Or is it really?
I want to make us use our minds a little bit today and I ask you to clear from your answer slate any answer that has been given to you over the years that you don’t really believe or live yourself. Because there are neighbors who are sitting in the room next to us who are desperate to know, “what is this Christianity thing all about”.
So, how would you respond? What is Christianity all about?
When I started thinking about it, I began to put down things in a list of what makes a Christian a Christian. I had on there things like church, giving, missions, etc. as these seem to be expressions of my faith. But what lies behind those? What are the values that make a Christ-follower genuine? I think we would need to add some artistic language instead of just concrete, measurable statements. Words like “hope” and “joy” and “relationship” may be used too.
Micah 6:8 states, “No, O people, the LORD has told you what is good, and this is what he requires of you: to do what is right, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”
I love this phrase because it appears on first glance to be describing activity of one who wants to follow God but if you look deeper, there are some deep heart issues to unpack.
“to do what is right” Surely, the prophet is telling the people of God to live the reality of God in their actions. He is saying that part of being Simply Christian is to have an understanding of what is the right way to live and then to act upon that understanding. In order to get here, one must be humble enough to admit that what is right is often what is most difficult. This also has an element of justice in it…naming a reality of God being a God of justice (see more in the next week’s lifeline and Chpts. 1 & 2). One question to think about for now (this is just the introduction ):
• How do my earthly decisions “right-en” things on earth?
“to love mercy” I adore this statement because it speaks directly to my heart. I cannot just DO mercy. I am asked to LOVE it. My heart should beat for mercy because my life has been caught up by God’s mercy for me. I am praying that God would grow in me a greater capacity to be a mercy-bearer to everyone I know.
• Am I growing in the amount of mercy I give those who don’t deserve it?
“to walk humbly” Could Christianity Made Simple be summed up in this statement? Would by neighbor be caught up with my love for God if I best illustrated my Christianity as a humble journey with God? Yes, we approach the throne with confidence. Yes, we know that we cannot be separated from the love of God. But, we also know that we take NO confidence in our flesh and that if anything good is from us, it has FIRST come down from the Father of Lights. The longer we walk with God, the more humble we become.
• How am I submitting my pride to God today?
This book is going to lead us down some pretty deep roads and I pray that you hang on through the whole summer.
In Wright’s introduction he states that his aim of the text is “to describe what Christianity is all about.” A simple task. Or is it really?
I want to make us use our minds a little bit today and I ask you to clear from your answer slate any answer that has been given to you over the years that you don’t really believe or live yourself. Because there are neighbors who are sitting in the room next to us who are desperate to know, “what is this Christianity thing all about”.
So, how would you respond? What is Christianity all about?
When I started thinking about it, I began to put down things in a list of what makes a Christian a Christian. I had on there things like church, giving, missions, etc. as these seem to be expressions of my faith. But what lies behind those? What are the values that make a Christ-follower genuine? I think we would need to add some artistic language instead of just concrete, measurable statements. Words like “hope” and “joy” and “relationship” may be used too.
Micah 6:8 states, “No, O people, the LORD has told you what is good, and this is what he requires of you: to do what is right, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”
I love this phrase because it appears on first glance to be describing activity of one who wants to follow God but if you look deeper, there are some deep heart issues to unpack.
“to do what is right” Surely, the prophet is telling the people of God to live the reality of God in their actions. He is saying that part of being Simply Christian is to have an understanding of what is the right way to live and then to act upon that understanding. In order to get here, one must be humble enough to admit that what is right is often what is most difficult. This also has an element of justice in it…naming a reality of God being a God of justice (see more in the next week’s lifeline and Chpts. 1 & 2). One question to think about for now (this is just the introduction ):
• How do my earthly decisions “right-en” things on earth?
“to love mercy” I adore this statement because it speaks directly to my heart. I cannot just DO mercy. I am asked to LOVE it. My heart should beat for mercy because my life has been caught up by God’s mercy for me. I am praying that God would grow in me a greater capacity to be a mercy-bearer to everyone I know.
• Am I growing in the amount of mercy I give those who don’t deserve it?
“to walk humbly” Could Christianity Made Simple be summed up in this statement? Would by neighbor be caught up with my love for God if I best illustrated my Christianity as a humble journey with God? Yes, we approach the throne with confidence. Yes, we know that we cannot be separated from the love of God. But, we also know that we take NO confidence in our flesh and that if anything good is from us, it has FIRST come down from the Father of Lights. The longer we walk with God, the more humble we become.
• How am I submitting my pride to God today?
This book is going to lead us down some pretty deep roads and I pray that you hang on through the whole summer.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Simply Christian
Beginning Sunday, June 8th, our church is inviting its community to read through, pray through and reflect on N.T. Wright's book, "Simply Christian." Our church bookstore will be selling the book and it is available all over the internet.
Each week, I will be posting some reflections and thoughts on this web page to encourage dialog, questioning, prayer and reflection. If you'd like to submit comments, please do so!!!! Let me know that you're journeying with us, even if you never add a comment by emailing me. The reading schedule for the summer will look like this:
By June 18th - Read Chapters 1 & 2
By June 25th - Read Chapters 3 & 4
By July 2nd - Read Chapter 5
By July 9th - Read Chapter 6
By July 16th - Read Chapters 7 & 8
By July 23rd - Read Chapters 9 & 10
By July 30th - Read Chapter 11
By August 6th - Read Chapter 12
By August 13th - Read Chapters 13 & 14
By August 20th - Read Chapters 15 & 16
By August 27th - Read Afterword
I will post things on Wednesdays and our church's lifeline email will feature thoughts on this book as well. Let me know that you're tracking with us and look forward to great discussion and hopefully new lives of greater depths!
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